Robert Merton outlined five ways in which members of society could respond to success goals:
Where members of a society conform to success goals, and also the normative means of reaching them. They strive or success by means of accepted and legal channels.
Secondly, there is the response of innovation. This means that the person rejects normative means of achieving success, and instead turns to deviant means of achieving success - mainly via crime. Merton argues that members of the lower social strata are most likely to adopt this route for they are less likely to attain success through conventional channels, because their educational achievements tend to be low, and so heir jobs provide few chances for advancement, and so there is a greater pressure upon them to deviate, for crime provides greater rewards to them than traditional means.
Merton uses the term ritualism to describe the third response. The people who fit into this category are deviant because they have, to a large extent, abandoned the widely held success goals. The majority of those in this alternative are members of the lower middle class, for their occupations provide a smaller chance of success than their upper middle class counterparts. However, they cannot turn to crime for they have been strongly socialized to conform to society's norms and values, and so unable to innovate, their only solution is to scale down their ambitions.
The fourth response is known as rebellion. This is a rejection of both success goals and institutionalised means, and replaces them with different goals and means. Those who adopt such beliefs want to create a new society, and Merton himself argues that it is "typically members of the rising class rather than the most depressed strata who organize the resentful and rebellious into a revolutionary group."
Merton terms the final, and least common response as retreatism. It applies to the most 'different' members of society, such as "psychotics, outcasts, vagabonds, tramps, alcoholics, and drug addicts." They have strongly internalised both cultural goals, and also the institutionalised means, but are unable to achieve success, abandon all ambition, and as a result, drop out of society, resigned to failure.
Several critics have attacked Robert Merton's theories, for neglecting the power relationships in society as a whole, within which deviance and conformity occur.
Cohen's work was in fact a modification and advancement of Merton's beliefs and position. From his own studies of delinquency, he pointed out two significant criticisms of Merton's position on working class deviance:
He argued that delinquency is a collective rather than an individual response, and secondly Cohen argued that Merton failed to account for non-utilarian crime - such as vandalism and joy riding which does not produce monetary reward.
He did actually agree with Merton in the sense that their arguments began similarly. Lower-working-class boys hold the success goals of mainstream culture, but largely as a result of educational failure and poor jobs, pay wise and opportunity wise, they have few chances to obtain their goals. Due to this, they have a tendency to suffer from status frustration - they become dissatisfied with their low status in society. They resolve their situation not by criminal means, but by rejecting the mainstream goals, and replacing them with an alternative set. The result is delinquent subculture that can be seen as a collective solution to the common problems of lower-working-class adolescents. This subculture actually reverses the mainstream culture, and a high value is placed upon deviant activities such as vandalism, truancy, and theft, which are all condemned in the wider society. However, he claims that the delinquent subculture is more than an act of defiance: it is a negative reaction to society that has denied opportunities to some of its members, and those who perform successfully in terms of their values, gain recognition and prestige from their peers, meaning they gain positive rewards: something foreign to them as regards work.
Like Merton, Cohen began his study from a structural perspective, but when he saw some forms of delinquency as being a collective response directed by subcultural values. In this way he showed how pressure from the social structure to deviate was reinforced by pressure from the deviant subculture.
Cloward and Ohlin have combined and developed several of Merton's and Cohen's work and insights. Whilst largely accepting Merton's views on criminal deviance amongst the working classes, they argued that he had failed to explain the varying forms that deviance takes, for example why do some delinquent gangs concentrate on theft, whilst others devote their time to vandalism and violence?
They began their explanation of working class delinquency from the same point as Merton: there is a greater pressure on members of the working class to deviate for they have a lesser opportunity to succeed by legal means. Cloward and Ohlin then proceeded to distinguish three responses to the situation.
The criminal subculture, where they tend to emerge in areas where there is an established pattern of organized adult crime. In such areas a learning environment exists for the young, and they are exposed to criminal skills and deviant values.
Secondly are conflict subcultures, which tend to develop in areas where adolescents have little opportunity for access to illegitimate opportunity structures. Generally, gang violence is rife for access to legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures are blocked as a result of there being no organized adult crime to provide them with an apprenticeship.
Their final subculture is known as the retreatist subculture. They claim this is mainly based around illegal drug use, because they failed to succeed in all social structures, and, in this sense, are seen as double failures.
Walter Miller did not believe that a deviant subculture arose from the inability of the working class member's failure to achieve success, but he explained crime in terms of the existence of a distinctive lower class subculture. He claimed that their values and way of life actively encourage working class men to break the law. The distinctive cultural system that he describes includes a number of focal concerns, or their major interest areas. They include:
Toughness; this involves a concern for masculinity and finds expression in courage in the face of a physical threat, along with a rejection of timidity and weakness. In practice, this leads to assault and battery as a response to maintaining toughness.
Smartness; this involves the capacity to outsmart one another. It plays a significant part in the repertoire of a hustler and conmen.
Finally there is excitement. This requires the search for thrills for emotional stimulus. In practice, it is sought in gambling, sexual adventures, and alcohol, all of which can be combined in a night out.
Charles Murray does not accept that the underclass share the same values as the rest of mainstream society, in that he sees the underclass as being responsible for a high proportion of crime, and explains their criminality in terms of their rejection of widely held norms and values. Murray suggests that the development of such values is brought about as a result of the generosity of welfare states. The payments provided by welfare states have made it possible for young women to become single parents and for young men that it is unimportant to hold down a steady job.
In conclusion, the subcultural theories claim that deviance is the result of individuals conforming to the values and norms of the social group to which they belong. On the other hand, structural theories of deviance explain the origins of deviance in terms of the position of individuals or groups in the social structure. Moreover, David Matza claims that many theories of delinquency are misleading in two ways:
They make deviants appear more distinctive than they really are, and they present an over-deterministic view of the origins of deviance.
